tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post5883641563423450113..comments2024-03-05T06:16:30.628-06:00Comments on Mary and Mariology: Mechthild's Vision of MaryServant of Maryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-30928723771889542542015-11-22T14:00:57.667-06:002015-11-22T14:00:57.667-06:00To follow on dyingst's comment: it is importan...To follow on dyingst's comment: it is important, I think, to distinguish between Mary as an exemplar and the effect of having such a female figure on the development of ideas about women. I, for my own part, think that the reason that Western civilization, specifically, Western Christian civilization developed the very radical ideas that it did about women was precisely because Mary had such an elevated place in medieval Christian theology and devotion. To blame Mary for being an "unattainable ideal" makes no more sense than to blame Jesus for being a God-man rather than simply a holy man or saint. That we now see both of them in these terms ("insulting" rather than "inspiring") has (as I have been trying to suggest) more to do with changes in how European Christians think about what kind of knowledge they want to have about Jesus and his mother than it does with medieval efforts (as Warner et al. have contended) to "keep women down." On the specific imagery that Mechthild uses: as far as Mechthild and her sisters were concerned, they had achieved the highest ideal possible for women--namely, virgins. They were in no way considered lesser because they were not also mothers, for after all, as virgins, they expected (or hoped) to sing the new song reserved for virgins before the throne of the Lamb, themselves elevated above all other women who had been mothers. The sense that women should be *both* virgin and mother like the Virgin Mary would have struck them as nonsensical, I expect. Which leaves us with the puzzle of how it ever came to be normative for Catholic women (as Warner seems to have be taught or imagined). RLFBServant of Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-43418462330115321732015-11-19T16:59:07.251-06:002015-11-19T16:59:07.251-06:00Something interesting to consider when we think of...Something interesting to consider when we think of Mary as an unattainable ideal for women is the degree to which she served, in a different way, as an unattainable ideal for men as well. Indeed, the whole cult of the saints in general strikes me as setting up a host of unattainable exemplars, especially when we consider the incredible feats that the saints accomplish in so many medieval hagiography. How does this constant establishment of unattainable heroes shape a culture in general? Or, from another angle, how does it differentiate a society from the one we live in today? Of course, this is largely just a broadening of the question which you ask. <br /><br />Interesting also is the connection between wisdom and virginity, we tend to divorce intellectual achievement from personal conduct, but that divide was not present at all, indeed it was actively rejected, by the authors we read. What does that say about knowledge (perhaps more accurately about wisdom) as conceived of by these authors, and what sort of impact might virginity have on our ability to know?dyingsthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02087241514388178221noreply@blogger.com